(Photo Credit: Chicago Sun-Times)

Five Chicago men known as the Dixmoor 5 reached a historic settlement of $40 million for their wrongful conviction in a 1991 rape and murder case, according to Chicago Tribune.

The men, ages 14 to 16 at the time of the crime, were arrested in the death of 14-year-old Cateresa Matthews.

A DNA test would later exonerate the men from the crime.

Robert Taylor, James Harden and Jonathan Barr were release from prison in 2011 after serving 19 years, according to NBC Chicago. Shainne Sharp and Robert Veal were released after serving 10 years in prison.

Dixmoor and state police are alleged to have framed the then-teenagers and forced a confession out of Taylor and Veal, according to the Chicago Sun Times.

Veal, 15 at the time, had an IQ of 56 and developmental disabilities, according to the Tribune.

Police reportedly misled a 15-year-old Taylor’s mother to believe her son was being questioned as a potential witness in a drug investigation. But Taylor was instead taken in for questioning where he was beaten and threatened until he confessed to the rape and murder.

Cook County leads the nation in number of wrongful convictions.

Peter Neufel, an attorney who represented the men, slammed Cook County for the demoralizing statistics.

“What Cooperstown is to baseball, Chicago and Cook County has been to false confessions — it is not the ‘Hall of Fame,’ it is the ‘Hall of Shame,’” lawyer Peter Neufeld said, according to the Sun Times.

“If you took all the documented false confessions in the major cities of America and combined them, the number would be lower than the number in Cook County.”

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